


Waif

by Zaniida



Series: Open Chapterfics (POI) [11]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Ableist Language, Agony, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Capture, Denise's Delight, Despair, FinchWhump, Gen, Harold can get pretty self-deprecating, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, anal rape, disorientation, just hang in there, lemme know if i missed a tag, mostly to emphasize Harold's experience, read between the lines a bit, the bad guy's vague and faceless on purpose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:50:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22052092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaniida/pseuds/Zaniida
Summary: You’re not weak.  You got through it.  You did what you had to do to survive.  Don’t let anyone tell you that’s not strength.He’d lost track of time.  Was it three hours before Reese would get there?  Two and a half?  They were past the point where Harold’s words could do any good; now it was just a matter of endurance.Because he had knowledge that could tear the world apart, and they couldn’t threaten him into cooperating, couldn’t blackmail him.  In the end, it would come down to one thing: How much pain they could put him through before he broke.And Reese wouldn't be back until morning.
Relationships: Harold Finch & John Reese
Series: Open Chapterfics (POI) [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1098849
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Waif

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EggsyYes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EggsyYes/gifts), [FinchMe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinchMe/gifts).

> Thanks to **EggsyYes** and **FinchMe** for your encouraging comments! I noted your interest in "inspirational suffering," and thought that sounded close enough to this piece that I'd gift it your way. (The Comfort part has been sketched out a bit, but likely won't show up for a while; rest assured that this fic does indeed have a positive ending planned.)
> 
> This is actually the first _Person of Interest_ fic I ever started writing -- prior to actually watching the series. POI and _Lost_ are the two series where I felt I grasped enough of the characters from fics and/or fanvids that I could put together some little piece before I even cracked open an episode, and, seeing as I had never before been invested in a series prior to actually watching the series, I took that plunge. (I think I nailed Harold; don't think I did so well with my based-on-fic conception of John, but then, his actor gives him a lot of nuance that just doesn't come through in fic descriptions.)
> 
> Then I ran across _One-Way Glass: Shattered_, which changed my entire focus, and so I wrote my first official _Person of Interest_ fic, the flip side of that scenario (well, the flip side of the original, _One-Way Glass_, with some extrapolation from idinink's enthralling variant). Then I figured that I really ought not have two open rapefics at once, and so this has been sitting on the shelf for ages, just waiting to see the light of day.
> 
> But as [Mirror](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10691733/chapters/23678124) has come to a transition point (Harold and John are finally in a safe house, and able to switch from survive/escape to dealing with the psychological aftermath of the ordeal), I figure it's not such a bad thing if I post this now. Bearing in mind that it will be a while before this fic sees updates; it's outranked by a ton of other fics, both in this fandom and in the other fandoms I've been writing for (most notably the Marvel Cinematic Universe).
> 
> Sensitive readers, please bear in mind that this fic goes pretty dark in the first chapter, and I have yet to determine how the other chapters will progress. As noted, I intend my usual positive ending, but I don't know what all Finch might need to go through to get there, and this initial offering gets seriously traumatic in multiple ways. It's not labeled [Denise's Delight](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Denise's%20Delight) without good reason!

_You’re not weak_.

Just three weeks ago, the words hadn’t meant that much to Harold. A case was over, the threat taken out, the victim sobbing in Reese’s arms. From the library, Harold had been listening in, too busy arranging cleanup to lend more than half an ear to Reese’s words—but the words had somehow gotten lodged in his brain, because he could hear them now, as clearly as if it were Reese’s firm but gentle voice coming through the earpiece again:

_You’re not weak. You got through it. You did what you had to do to survive. It doesn’t matter that you couldn’t fight, couldn’t run—that you had to just stay there and let it happen. You survived, that’s the important part. You held on, you waited, you got through it. Don’t let anyone tell you that’s not strength_.

At the time, Harold hadn’t really connected to the principle Reese was laying out; it hadn’t seemed to apply to him. And yet now he was desperately trying to cling to the idea.

Because Reese wouldn’t be back until morning. And Harold was struggling to focus on the four and a half hours to go until he would walk through that door again. He could imagine Reese’s training kicking in, how he’d sense that something was wrong and he’d take out his gun and sneak in and he’d solve things in ways Harold never could, never wanted to. But he’d solve them. When he got there.

Harold couldn’t see the clock anymore—everything beyond a few inches was just blobs of color, lights and shadows, irrelevant. He couldn’t make the night go any faster, couldn’t alert Reese or bring him to the library any sooner. All he could do was wait for Reese to get there.

The gulf of time between that moment and now stretched out as the ropes were pulled tight, putting an aching strain on his shoulder and lower back. He tried to keep his breathing steady, focus on that, because if he panicked too early he was never going to last.

His captor knew him as one of his throwaway aliases; the man didn’t call him “Finch.” It was a small comfort: a secret they hadn’t gotten from him yet. Tonight’s ordeal was all about secrets, and he wasn’t going to make it easy for them.

The threats hadn’t started in yet, but he knew they would. At the moment, it was the familiar patter of greed, of power lust: Harold had knowledge that could tear the world apart, and here was yet another unremarkable face trying to coax it out of him. And when it became clear that coaxing wouldn’t work, then they’d try to beat it out of him. Or threaten him and everything he cared about until he caved.

It was beyond them to think that he could care more about preserving the secret than about anything else. No loved ones in his life, not anymore—with a solitary exception, and if they hadn’t worked out that he was Harold Finch, they certainly hadn’t found _her_. No luxuries or precious keepsakes that he wouldn’t jettison in an instant if he had to. His failures haunted him daily, but the one big skeleton in his closet, the one that cowed all the other skeletons into insignificance, was the one thing they were after. On that front, his secret was impregnable.

So they couldn’t talk him into it, couldn’t threaten him into cooperating, couldn’t blackmail him. In the end, it would come down to one thing: How much pain they could put him through before he broke.

He wasn’t under the delusion that he could withstand torture the way Reese could. Still, he did have a home-court advantage: Harold’s daily life _was_ pain, and not the kind he could ever escape from—not even if he’d been willing to surrender his mind to the effort. The constant aches, the sudden sharp stabs down his spine or up his neck… the times an unexpectedly jarring movement drove him to tears before he’d even had a chance to register the damage done—in a strange way, pain was the sphere in which he operated, familiar like the background hum of computer fans.

Dealing with that, without losing himself in the process, meant picking up countless mental tricks—not to fight the pain, but to distance himself, distract himself until it passed. It was how he’d managed to escape the lure of pain meds, keep his wits about him. It was what he needed right now.

Because there were four hours to go, and the conversation had already run out.

* * *

The library had a bed now, thanks to Reese’s insistence after more than once finding Harold asleep on his keyboard. Bad things were about to happen on that bed, but that wasn’t the reason for Harold’s pale face as the man forced him toward it. They’d already gone over the possibilities of the night, and Harold was stuck with a mental image that wouldn’t leave: His hands tied down tight, the bite of a bolt cutter crushing through flesh and bone as it separated hands from fingers, one knuckle at a time.

There were two possible ends to that scenario, and both of them terrified him beyond words.

Almost certainly he’d give in. There wasn’t even a question of it anymore: He’d give up the Machine, scream out whatever he had to just to make the pain and panic stop a little sooner. His captor had unwittingly found the perfect scenario, the one torment that Harold knew he couldn’t deal with.

But if he managed, impossibly, to hold out—if he made it through the pain and kept his integrity, clinging to the hope that Reese would get to him in time—in that future, his useless hands meant the end of anything he could do with his life. He was a quick mind in a crippled body, but so long as he had fingers on a keyboard he could find the necessary info, track the people, move the data, protect his partner—accomplish miracles, save lives.

Take that away—leave him with stubby, useless hands and whatever he could manage from voice-recognition technology—it was unthinkable. He’d lose the one thing that could distract him from the pain of his body and the crushing guilt of his mistakes. At that point, he might as well just slit his own throat.

Unbearable images kept swirling through his head as his arms were pulled up to the headboard and tied there. The leering grin of his captor dipped in close enough to swim into focus, briefly, before it pulled away, and Harold felt the man’s hands on his fly, the buttons snapping off as he impatiently ripped it apart. Not wanting to think about what was coming, he drove his mind back to that case, just three short weeks ago.

_Doesn't matter that you couldn't fight, couldn't run—that you had to just stay there and let it happen. You held on, you waited, you got through it. Don't let anyone tell you that's not strength_.

He’d lost track of time. Was it three hours before Reese would get there? Two and a half? No, it had to be more than three; they hadn’t spent a whole hour discussing torture techniques. Three and a half, then, maybe. They were past the point where Harold’s words could do any good; now it was just a matter of endurance. And this, here on the bed—his shoes were being tugged off—this was just one more thing tonight, one more thing he had to get through. Maybe he should have felt disgusted by it, but somehow the image of losing his fingers had sunk in deep enough that everything else seemed comparatively unimportant.

The pants were jerked off his legs, and he heard the fabric rip and thought about how much trouble it was going to be to find a competent tailor while they were on the move again. Because it was obvious, after tonight, that they needed to clear out of the library. All his paranoia, all their safety precautions, and he still didn't know how the guy had gotten in without him realizing it until that gun barrel had pressed into the back of his neck. This was no longer a safe space, and that wasn't even counting the potential for flashbacks any time he was sitting at his computer or, God forbid, _sleeping on his own bed_.

A thin blade slipped between his briefs and his skin, and he closed his eyes, focusing again on his breathing as the fabric was pulled away. Then there were hands on the underside of his knees, pushing his legs up toward his chest, and he cried out from the strain it put on his hip, his lower back, the awkward angle of his neck between his arms with nothing supporting it. The weight of the man's body made it worse, and then he couldn't draw a full breath, the compression too great, and he was getting light-headed, spots of color flashing even though his eyes were closed. The rough burn of the intrusion was almost an afterthought, a footnote to every other type of pain and pressure his crippled frame was dealing with right now.

Every rocking motion of the bed was agony. His eyes stung, hot tears pooling and then rolling off along his cheeks, along the crook of his shoulder. His lungs burned their need for oxygen but he couldn't help them. He could feel the whole experience fading away into hazy darkness, but then there was a shift of rhythm and, soon after, a thick shudder of the man's body over and inside his own. The man collapsed on top of him and he would have screamed from the pain if he’d had any air in his lungs. The spots were more pronounced and he managed shallow breaths, too shallow for what he needed—

_You're not weak_, Reese had said. _You held on, you got through it. Don't let anyone tell you_—

Not soon enough, the man pulled off of him, out of him, and in the relief of full, gasping breaths Harold barely noted the sloppy wetness leaking onto the bed. But then the man wasn't holding his legs in place anymore and their weight was full on his back and he couldn't hold them there and he wanted them to be down on the bed but the transition was shattering through his pain threshold. They came down, and he _did_ scream, then, and wished he could pass out.

Three sharp _pops_, and he didn't have the cognition right then to try to figure out which part of his body had just broken. He just kept breathing as the screaming swelled around him. In and out. In and then out again. The screaming would stop eventually; it didn't matter right now.

Movement on the bed, one side dipping down as the weight came back, and he heard himself whimper, weakly, before he felt a pillow slip under his neck. His arms held him too high for it to do any good. The mattress shifted again as the weight left. Then his hand came loose; he sobbed at the jostling of his shoulder as his arm was brought down to the bed. The other hand followed, and he fell onto the pillow. There wasn't much else he could do right now, just take whatever was coming as it came.

Through his measured breathing he tried to work out how much longer he'd have to endure. Two and a half hours, at least. Maybe three. Too much time. He was past his limit already, and there wasn't even a bolt cutter yet. He lay still, exhausted, floating on the edge between awareness and oblivion. Maybe some of the endorphins had finally made their way to his brain—too little, too late.

Part of him, but luckily not a very insistent part, wanted to cry out for Reese. As if that would do any good. Reveal that Reese existed, that Harold thought of him when in distress—that he was a weak point, a way into Harold's psyche. Maybe put his captor on the alert, making it that much harder for Reese to handle the situation once he got there. Reese couldn't hear him anyway; the mics had been put away for the night, hours ago.

The screaming had died down, now all whimpers and broken sobs. There was something odd there, but Harold's brain wasn't processing right. There were words, angry words, punctuated swearing. A hazy fear lanced through him: Maybe he'd angered his captor somehow. An angry captor was an unpredictable one, one who could damage him worse.

There were hands on his face, and he knew he had to pull himself together somehow, enough to... something. Possibly important.

"Finch. _Finch_."

He didn't have to respond. Maybe that would push the time out a little, or maybe he'd just get slapped around for his trouble and his neck would suffer worse than it already was. But if he could talk it out a bit, maybe he could delay the next round for a while. Only his mind was still fuzzy with pain and aftershocks, and it was so hard to think.

**Author's Note:**

> _A hero must be active. Passive heroes are inherently flawed characters; thus, many Disney Princesses and similar folktale heroines are flawed, on that basis alone_.
> 
> It's a peculiar idea that I've heard being bandied about, this bias against "passive" heroes. I believe it comes down to not understanding the core of the [Waif archetype](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TCWGTHAHHeroines), which has the "Damsel in Distress" aesthetic but actually has more going for it than some mere throwaway cliche.
> 
> (Note: Cinderella [doesn't actually fit that stereotype](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huLSdm6IH0g) \-- she actively pursues her dreams to the best of her ability within her situation, and, as the video's title notes: _Stop Blaming the Victim_). But let's set that aside.)
> 
> A key point of the Waif is her ability to **bear up under hardship**. This is a laudable quality! It's just that we tend to see it in more active characters, and in smaller doses; the Waif takes that virtue and puts it front and center.
> 
> Trapped in a situation that cannot be escaped (at least, from the inside) through force, and possibly not through diplomacy or guile, the Waif must wait for rescue, while surviving physically, mentally, and emotionally. In order to do this, she must tap deep into her store of mental fortitude, her strength of will; she might need to cling to the thought of some external reason to hang on ("I have to last until X happens" or "I have to hang on because Bob would want me to"). Often she is pushed to the limits of her ability to cope, and we see just how much she can take, and how well she recovers after being broken.
> 
> In addition, she must try to avoid losing other **key virtues**: kindness/compassion, optimism (sometimes derided as naivete), and/or the ability to attract allies, just to name a few.
> 
> I find it fascinating that this character archetype is _Classically Female_ in literature, yet, in fanfics, the overwhelming bent toward male main characters has made it _commonly male_. And it's everywhere! We like to see characters beaten down to the very limits of what strength they can cling to, and then we like to see them built back up again. I've seen many examples of Harold Finch as a Waif (though perhaps not as pure an example as this fic attempts), as well as Loki and Bucky, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
> 
> (If you'd like to see Loki as a Waif archetype, check out my [Acceptable Loss](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18276593), where the fate of the Nine Realms is at stake and Loki must surrender to the inevitable.)
> 
> If you can think of fics where the focus is on a character surviving through an inescapable situation, ones where you thought the scenario was particularly interesting or well written, I would love to have a link!


End file.
